The Adventure of the Haunted Moneylender
by RosemaerieThyme
Summary: On Christmas Eve, Holmes and Watson are visited by a miserly old gentleman with a most singular story to tell.
1. Chapter 1

"The Adventure of the Haunted Moneylender"

It was a bitterly cold Christmas Eve in London. Thick fog had settled into the darkening streets like a clammy blanket, and a cold wind moaned eerily in the dark alleyways. I was certainly thankful for the crackling fire before which my friend Sherlock Holmes and I were seated. Holmes was looking up something in his encyclopedia, and I was thumbing cheerily through a book of Christmas carols, and working up the courage to ask my companion if he might consider playing some of them on his violin. I admit I was somewhat hesitant to ask him, as I was not sure what his Bohemian taste would cause him to think of the festivities of the season. "O little town of Bethlehem," I broke the silence by reading aloud, "How still we see thee lie! Above thy deep and dreamless sleep, the silent stars go by. Holmes, does that not evoke a lovely picture of the Nativity?"  
"I wonder at you, Watson," said Holmes, laying aside his encyclopedia and turning to me with a singular expression. "Surely you do not succumb to the fantasy of Christmas created by the poetry of the old carols. Consider the improbability of a town sending the Christ child to a filthy stable, and then suddenly falling into a reverent silence for Him. As a medical man, Watson, you ought to know that the birth of a child in such a place would be nothing like the idyllic pastoral scene the carolers sing of."  
"But Holmes!" I ejaculated. "Surely the birth of the Christ child, being such a miraculous occasion, would be accompanied by special circumstances?"  
"I think not, Watson," said my companion. "For, when one thinks of it, the beauty of the Christmas story lies not in the romantic notions one likes to imagine, but in the picture of our Lord willingly exchanging Heaven's glories for the putrid reality of a earthly stable. Do you not agree?"  
I had to admit there was truth to my friend's words, but his airy dismissal of the time-honored carols seemed to me rather sacrilegious. "But I say, Holmes--" I began again, but was interrupted by Mrs. Hudson's rap at the door. "A gentleman to see you, Mr. Holmes," she said, and, at a nod from my companion, showed a most singular person into the room. He was elderly, small, and shriveled, with a pointed nose and thin blue lips that didn't look as if they had ever smiled. His reddened eyes looked hard and sharp as a flint, and he had a distinct air of being secret and self-contained. In fact, I should have judged him to be as solitary as an oyster.  
"Sit down, won't you?" said Holmes, directing our visitor into an arm-chair. "I would wish you the compliments of the season, but, seeing as you would probably not appreciate them, I shall keep them to myself, and leave the greetings to my friend Watson. Now what may I do for you?"  
"I most certainly do NOT appreciate the season," said our visitor. "And, pleased as I am to have someone understand that, I must say I don't know how you knew it."  
"It is a simple matter of deduction," said Holmes with a grin playing about his features. "I observe that, while your fine watch and chain and the style of your clothing proclaim you to be a man of considerable means, your top hat is patched in three places, your jacket is worn quite thin, and your shoes I place at at least fourteen years of age. This indicates either a gentleman in reduced circumstances, or one who voluntarily refrains from spending money due to personal preference. The banker's gazette peering out of your waistcoat pocket indicates to me the latter, since a gentleman in reduced circumstances would not take such delight in reading of banking affairs that he carries the gazette with him wherever he goes. Therefore I conclude that you prefer not to spend your money, and as such could care nothing for Christmas, which is after all known as the season of liberality in giving. Do you not see how simple it is?"  
"Bah! Humbug!" said our visitor. "You seem to be very amused by your little games, Mr. Holmes, but I'm a very busy man and I'd like to get to my business if you please. My name is Ebenezer Scrooge, and I've come to consult you on a matter of great personal distress."  
"Mr. Scrooge?" I asked. "The moneylender?"  
"Yes, the moneylender," growled Scrooge, but at the mention of money I noticed a sort of cold gleam come into his eyes, that reminded me not a little of Holmes when someone mentioned his deductive powers. I must confess I had some misgivings about working with the gentleman. I had never met him, but his name was notorious among many of my poorer patients, for his heartless, miserly ways.  
"If it's a matter of money, Mr. Scrooge, I'm afraid you have come to the wrong quarters," said my friend, reaching once again for his encyclopedia. "A trip to the financial district would be more in order, I should think."  
"Bah!" said Mr. Scrooge, "If I were having money troubles, Mr. Holmes, I would certainly not have come to you. In fact--" his voice faltered for a moment, and a look came into his cold eyes that one might have interpreted as embarrassment. "The whole business is probably a humbug, Mr. Holmes, but I thought there was no harm in consulting you about it. Mr. Holmes, what do you know of psychic phenomena?"  
A look of keen interest came into my friend's eyes, and he leaned forward, placing his fingertips together. "Experience has taught me that much of it is, as you would say, a humbug," he said. "But I sense a tale worth hearing from this fellow, Watson. Pray describe to us what you have seen, Mr. Scrooge."  
"My business partner, Jacob Marley," began Mr. Scrooge, "has been dead these seven years, as dead as a doornail. Yet I tell you that this very night, I have seen his miserable face appear upon my doorknocker!"  
My face must have betrayed my surprise, but Holmes' remained as inscrutable as a book-jacket. "Did this face remain there for any length of time?" he questioned.  
"Only for a moment," said Mr. Scrooge.  
"I suppose you took the precaution of opening the door and looking behind it?" asked Holmes.  
"Nothing there," Mr. Scrooge replied.  
"And you are certain your partner is dead?"  
"There is no doubt whatever about that."  
Holmes ran his long fingers lightly over the arm of his chair. "Into your coat, Watson!" he said after a moment's reflection. "I think my friend and I had best accompany you to your lodgings tonight, Mr. Scrooge. This is a case in which speculation before facts is especially dangerous. You have no objection to us staying the night?"  
"I suppose not," Mr. Scrooge growled, "but don't expect any Christmas charity."  
A half-hour later, we were stamping our cold feet on the doorstep of Mr. Scrooge's apartments. My companion examined the doorknocker at length, but proclaimed there was nothing unusual about it. Mr. Scrooge, with a rather forced-sounding "Good-night, gentlemen," took himself off to bed, while Holmes and I sat up in the hallway to see what should happen. At Holmes' advice, I had my revolver cocked and by my side.  
I confess I must have dozed a little, for when I woke it seemed much later, yet Holmes had not broken his vigil. "Has anything happened?" I asked, feeling rather ashamed.  
"Not a thing, Watson," said my companion. "Mr. Scrooge has been sleeping like a baby all this time. If anything unusual has happened in this house tonight, it must be visible only to him."  
I pondered this as the clock slowly struck four. Two more hours passed in the dark passageway. Holmes and I chatted a bit about musical matters, but something in the quiet air seemed to still us into silence. Suddenly, as the first rays of morning were creeping into the room, the silence was shattered by a loud exclamation from Mr. Scrooge's bedchamber. In an instant, Holmes was on his feet and had flown into the room, I following close behind. The sight that met our eyes was certainly nothing like what I had expected.  
The crusty moneylender was capering about the room like a giddy schoolboy, shouting some garbled nonsense about the Past, the Present, and the Future.  
"Mr. Scrooge, calm yourself!" said Holmes, reaching for a flask of wine and attempting to guide our client into a chair.  
"I don't know what to do!" cried Mr. Scrooge, shaking him off. "A merry Christmas to everybody! A happy New Year to all the world!"  
"Really, Mr. Scrooge, this is most irregular," I began, but it was evident that our client was quite indifferent as to our bewilderment.  
"I'm reforming my life!" he cried, pumping our hands with delight. "I've had the most miraculous experience tonight, and I declare I'm as happy as an angel!" With that, he waltzed over to a wardrobe, pulled out two large moneybags, and plopped them into our astonished arms. "Many thanks for your services, Mr. Holmes, Dr. Watson," he said with a cheery grin. "But my experience is no longer a mystery to me! May I bid you good day and a very happy Christmas!"  
We found ourselves bewildered on the front doorstep, while Mr. Scrooge above us was leaning out the window shouting a greeting to an equally bewildered lad in the street.  
"Well, what do you make of that, Holmes?" I asked as we walked back to Baker Street in the crisp morning air.  
"Mr. Scrooge is a very...singular person," said my companion. "He is the second most interesting object that I have seen this Christmas."  
"And the first?" I asked.  
"I've said it before and I'll say it again," he answered, patting his money bag affectionately. "I am a poor man, Dr. Watson."

THE END


	2. Ch 2: Things That Go Bump in the Night

The next few weeks were for me, as the Christmas season so often is, the best of times and the worst of times. On the one hand, it was nice to be finishing up my graduate teaching class, getting Christmas cookies from several professors, and even putting aside momentarily the tragedy of the rejected thesis. On the other hand, though, it was painful to hear my two roommates sharing their excitement about going home to spend time with their families, while my own parents…  
I shoved aside this recurring thought as I packed my thin suitcase and other traveling bags. I reflected instead on another thing that added to the stress of the holiday: one of my roommates had graduated this December and was starting her new job in Prague, and the other was getting married in a month. As a single student in my third year of grad school, I could never afford the apartment rent myself. I knew that at least some portion of my holiday would have to be spent in coming up with a new place to live.  
Fortunately, though, I felt some of these anxious thoughts draining away as my plane to New York City drifted high into the untroubled sky. Reaching for my suitcase, I pulled out a well-worn book with a green cover: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. I had to admit that my concern over the thesis was more than just a professional one; I felt connected with my topic on a very personal level. It was amazing that, no matter how many times I read these stories, they never got old. I turned to the seasonally appropriate story, The Blue Carbuncle.

I had called upon my friend Sherlock Holmes upon the second morning after Christmas, with the intention of wishing him the compliments of the season. He was lounging upon the sofa in a purple dressing-gown, a pipe-rack within his reach upon the right, and a pile of crumpled morning papers, evidently newly studied, near at hand.

Oh yes, I thought. The world is not a total loss. Not yet. Not while it is always 1895.

Some hours later, I was frantically locating my luggage while responding to the enthusiastic greetings of my aunt, uncle, and cousin who had come to the airport to meet me. My Uncle Oakes, my father's brother, was an attorney with dark, balding hair and a straightforward manner. His wife, my Aunt Clarice, was a sweet-faced lady who worked as a substitute teacher in an elementary school. Their daughter, Jeanette, had inherited her father's dark hair and her mother's sweet personality, and had just completed her first semester of nursing school. I hadn't seen any of them since summertime, and it was nice, though somewhat bittersweet, to see them again.  
Luggage safely stowed away in the trunk, the four of us were soon on our way to the Ingham family's ancestral home, as I called it, deep in the quiet, cold countryside of upstate New York. Snowflakes capered blithely across the car windows as we enjoyed the beautiful view, Jeanette and I chatting and comparing our respective semesters. I found myself relaxing in her cheerful presence, and before I knew it, the high gables and old-fashioned turrets of my grandparents' house could be seen ahead, cutting sharply into the darkening sky.  
We spent a festive Christmas Eve together, attending a candlelight service in the tiny, old-fashioned village chapel, then returning through the cold air for hot chocolate and cookies in the high-ceilinged kitchen. However, I felt a sort of anticipatory tension in the air, which was soon explained to me by the arrival of my other uncle, Mordred Ingham, who unfortunately was a source of a lot of family contention. Black-haired and pale-faced, he had never married, and was a professor of biochemistry at Columbia University. Although I knew it was foolish, since childhood I had never been easy in my uncle's presence. He was a very silent, solitary person, with bright eyes that could be quite startling in his pale face. And I could never understand why the heck my grandparents had named him after the chief antagonist in the King Arthur legend.  
Snow was falling thickly by the time everyone started retiring to bed. My grandfather was looking anxiously out the window. "Hope the roads don't ice too badly," he said, closing the curtains.  
The power chose this moment to go decidedly and ominously out.  
Jeanette squealed, and I heard Aunt Clarice stumbling around in the dark. I have never been an emotionally demonstrative person, but even I felt a chill at being suddenly plunged into blackness.  
"It's all right, everyone! Don't panic!" came Uncle Oakes' reassuring voice. "Only a little power outage." There was a spluttering sound, and his face appeared, framed by the light of my grandmother's oil-lamp. Fortunately, the country house was equipped with a steady generator, and my two uncles soon got the power up and running again.  
I was grateful for the restored heat as Jeanette and I snuggled into our beds in the upstairs guest room that had always been reserved for the young people of the family. Memories of Jeanette and I staying in this room in happier days flooded my memory as I looked up at the old wooden rafters.  
"This house has such an interesting history," I explained to my cousin as she switched off the light. "You know a lot of it was rebuilt of course. So much of it was destroyed in that fire in 1895." I smiled secretly to myself as I said that date. I'd always thought it was special to have such an important family matter take place in that particular historical period.  
"It is an amazing house," Jeanette agreed. There was silence in the room until she said, with a confidential air, "So, Shirley, have you met anyone special at Crosby University yet?"  
I felt my face go a little pink. "I don't know what you mean, Jeanette," I began.  
"Oh yes, you do," she said, with a friendly teasing air. "Unless you're still in love with Sherlock Holmes, like you used to be."  
"I--what?" I sat straight up in my bed, knowing my face was now a lovely festive shade of red. "Jeanette, you weirdo, I was never in love with--"  
"Oh, come on, Shirley," she said, laughing at my reaction. "Don't be ashamed of it! When I was 10 I had a huge crush on Peter Pevensie from the Chronicles of Narnia."  
"Yes, well," I said, slumping back down onto my pillow. "I am significantly older than 10, my dear."  
"So you admit it," she said.  
"I--no!" I exclaimed. "You're weird, and you're imagining things. Sherlock Holmes is a fascinating character, yes, but he's an imaginary person who never existed. At least in the viewpoint of the Crosby U. English Department, that is," I added with a note of regret in my voice.  
"Mom said you were planning to write your graduate thesis about him," said Jeanette.  
"I was planning to," I admitted. "But certain superiors had other ideas."  
"Aww, I'm so sorry!" my cousin sympathized. "Some people are blind, that's all there is to it. Sherlock Holmes or not, I'm sure any thesis you write would be awesome!"  
I smiled in spite of myself. "Thanks, Jeanette," I said. "Now it's time for you and your absurd notions to get some sleep." I mean it, I added mentally, for I feared the impending assignment of that most dreaded appellation: screaming, squealing fangirl!  
"Whatever," said Jeanette. "'Night, cuz."  
"'Night," I replied, snuggling deeper in my warm covers. In spite of the teasing, Jeanette really was a sweetie, I reflected as I slipped into slumber. My last waking thought was a regret that we had drifted apart of late, as had the entire family. I prayed that this Christmas would give us a chance to reconnect with each other.

"What?"  
"I didn't say anything."  
Confused shuffling noises were coming from downstairs, and there was an heightened excitement in the air that my sensitive nature picked up on immediately. I rubbed my eyes in the dim light, and saw that it was sometime in the very early morning. Vaguely I saw Jeanette crawling out of bed and hunting around for her slippers.  
"What's going on?" I asked.  
"I don't know," she answered, turning to me with a white face. "Shirley, I'm scared."  
"Scared? What--" I began, but was cut off by the entrance of my Aunt Clarice, who flung our door open dramatically.  
"Oh, girls, girls, girls," she cried, running across the room and pulling both of us close to her. "Oh, thank heavens you're alright!"  
"Aunt Clarice, what on earth is going on around here?" I said sharply, feeling her and Jeanette's panic enter my own heart.  
"Oh honey, it's your uncle!"  
"Oakes?"  
"No, Mordred. Oh, it's too horrible! And on this night of all nights!"  
"What? Is he sick?"  
"No, girls," said my aunt, twisting her trembling hands together. "Your Uncle Mordred…is dead!"


End file.
